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This weekend, I watched
a National Geographic documentary called 'Science of Evil'. In it,
experts described the forces behind the worst of human
conduct-situational suggestibility (i.e. prisons), self-preservation,
brain defects, etc. One word that came up quite often was psychopath.
While it's no surprise that a person like Ted Bundy or the BTK killer
would be given that label, I found it interesting that many
psychopaths can go through society relatively unnoticed. They might
not be killers, but they have no conscience and can easily hurt
someone through emotional, sexual and financial means without a
second thought. Psychopaths make up less than 1% of the population,
so most of us will not come across one. They are, however, very
charming and can cause untold damage to any woman they get involved
with. The 'true crime documentary' nut in me finds this both
interesting and scary at the same time. I'm not trying to scare
anyone, just inform.

Let me make something
clear: although many people use the terms interchangeably, there are
slight differences between a psychopath and a sociopath. For
instance, psychopathy is thought to be something a person is born
with ('nature') whereas sociopathy is thought to be influenced by a
person's environment ('nurture'). Also, while neither will feel
remorse or guilt for their bad acts toward humanity as a whole,
sociopaths can form emotional attachments and thus feel bad for
things that hurt those particular people. Psychopaths, being
much more 'calculating' and deliberate in their misdeeds, cannot.
It's very difficult to prove these things, of course, but these are
some of the ideas psychiatrists have come up with in recent years.
Since I'm talking about 'shared' traits, I'm using the term
'psychopath'.

The list varies
according to who you ask, but here are some of the common
characteristics of psychopaths.

Using charisma or
superficial charm to attract and lure potential 'victims'

Shallow emotions,
often 'faking it'

Complete inability
to take responsibility for their own actions, often 'projecting'
blame onto others. This often leads to poor job performance,
recklessness with money, the law and/or sex, etc

A constant need
for excitement (i.e. hurting people for the 'rush')

Having a 'short
fuse'-getting very temperamental over trivial things

Deceitful and
manipulative with little regard to being 'found out'

Jekyll/Hyde
tendencies-drastic change from decent to violent with little warning

No feelings of
guilt or remorse of any kind

An inability to
love or form emotional connections

Extreme
egocentricity and selfishness

Complete lack of
regard for rules, norms, other people, etc

Lack of empathy in
general

It's important to
remember that we all do some of these things at some point in time. I
know I've lied to get out of trouble, 'faked' emotions, experienced
schadenfreude* or projected things onto other people. The
difference is that 'normal' people do these things occasionally
while psychopaths do them all the time. Also, we probably feel
bad if we hurt someone. Psychopaths don't. They know right from wrong; they just don't care.

Before you think, 'why
in the world would I get involved with someone like this?',
psychopaths can be very charming when it suits them. Ted Bundy, for
instance, was smart, handsome, successful-attractive by most women's
standards. He used this to his advantage in a big way. However,
remember that psychopaths aren't necessarily violent or become serial
killers; they do, however, get under people's skin, use them and then
toss them aside once they are no longer useful.